Preclinical R&D Expert – In-house Drug Development
Listed pay: $60to 100 / hr
What the posting lists, in US dollars an hour, before anything Mercor deducts.
10 openings on this one listing.
How to apply- Platform
- Mercor
- Terms
- Contract, part-time
- Location
- Remote, no country stated
- Posted
- · 4 weeks ago
- Status
- Open at the last check
Applying on Mercor
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What happens after you click
- The link opens this role on Mercor. Sign up and apply from there.
- Upload a resume, complete the assessments the role asks for and verify your work authorisation.
- An AI interview of about 20 minutes. Mercor says it usually takes 2 to 4 weeks to hear back.
- If Mercor hires you, you are paid weekly, on the Wednesday after each work week, via Stripe. Mercor says first payouts are held for 7 days.
- The work is paid by the hour, at the $60–100 this posting lists.
- Remote. The posting names no country, so we have not assumed one applies.
What the work is
Mercor is partnering with a venture-backed AI lab building frontier AI platforms and physics-based foundation models for chemistry, materials science, and drug discovery. They're extending their platform into new areas of pharmaceutical development and are looking for hands-on preclinical R&D experts across drug modalities to help guide what they build.
Are you a preclinical R&D scientist who has taken drug programs from the bench toward the clinic — and curious how AI is reshaping drug discovery? This is a hands-on role that blends your wet-lab and translational experience with a growing understanding of how scientific data trains the next generation of AI models.
In this role, you'll:
Review technical materials and real-world R&D data in your area of expertise
Label, classify, and annotate scientific data and model outputs to improve model performance
Provide expert perspective on key scientific and development decisions (target/modality selection, optimization, trade-offs, risk)
Help define structure and quality standards for the client's dataset pipeline
Participate in expert discussions, interviews, and research engagements
You're a strong fit if you:
Have hands-on, non-administrative preclinical R&D experience at a company that develops its own drug assets in-house and has taken programs to the clinic — Must Have
Work in a core R&D function: discovery biology, medicinal chemistry, protein/antibody engineering, computational, in vivo/translational, pharmacology/PK-PD, toxicology, or CMC/formulation — Must Have
Have hands-on experience with one or more drug modalities (small molecules, monoclonal antibodies, peptides, ADCs, bispecifics, mRNA, siRNA, ASOs, PROTACs, molecular glues, cell therapies, gene therapies, radioligand therapies, etc.) — Must Have
Have 5+ years of relevant industry R&D experience (flexible based on depth)
Have taken a program through lead optimization or IND-enabling/preclinical development (nice to have)
Have experience at mid-sized, emerging, or resource-constrained biotech — ideally currently outside the top-20 pharmaceutical companies (nice to have)
This is a hands-on preclinical R&D role — likely not the right fit if your work is mainly CRO/CDMO services, academic-only, QC/analytical-only, clinical-development-only, diagnostics, or regulatory/medical-writing.
Your work will directly feed into the models reshaping how medicines are discovered, helping intelligent systems reason about real-world pharmaceutical R&D.
Here are more details about the role:
You will interface directly with the client team.
This is an ongoing, part-time engagement of roughly 10 hours per week.
Seniority welcome from individual contributor through Director.
From the Mercor listing.